With increasingly busy schedules, many consumers wish to expend less time on relatively mundane and repetitive tasks, such as shopping. Unfortunately, shopping can be a very time-consuming task. For many consumers, shopping is still performed the way it has been for decades. For example, when buying groceries, a consumer typically composes a list of items to purchase (either mentally or manually), drives to the grocery store, selects the items, waits in line to purchase the selected items, pays for the items, loads the purchased items into the car, and then drives home. Moreover, when selecting items in a store, consumers often check expiration dates, compare pricing, and check for coupons or sales, which adds to the time required to complete the task. Moreover, if a store is out of certain items, a consumer may have to drive to another store. Thus, the entire shopping experience can be very time-consuming and inefficient.
Shopping via Internet-based web sites has been available for some time. These retail web sites allow consumers to select and purchase for delivery, or pick up, items offered by retailers. The user experience, however, may be less than optimal. Some retail web sites utilize cumbersome and rigidly structured hierarchical menus to select items for purchase. This approach is counter to the way many consumers approach shopping, particularly grocery shopping. In addition, some retail web sites may not allow consumers to price-compare similar items between stores, thus making it difficult to decide where to shop. In addition consumers often wish to price-compare brands in the same store quickly, a feature traditionally not provided.
On-line auction web sites, such as Priceline.com, allow consumers to bid for items at various retail stores. However, when comparing prices online before making a purchase, a consumer typically has to go to multiple web sites to obtain pricing information or typically has to use multiple search engines. Similarly, when submitting bids, a consumer may not receive the item of choice or may have to submit re-bids with changed parameters because the item of choice did not elicit responses from retailers. These shopping methods can be very time consuming, as well.
Previous forays into enhanced shopping have allowed users to submit shopping orders and request grocery delivery in non-traditional manners (e.g., WebVan, Publix on-line shopping), but in each case users were limited to the inventory from a single vendor or chain of stores.
As such, there is a need for improved on-line shopping methods that can improve on traditional retail web sites by: exploiting currently-available technologies, more efficiently using consumers' time and input, enhancing consumer control over their shopping experience, expanding product searches across multiple vendors, and automating repetitive shopping tasks,